


Thousand Count Sheets

by riotcow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Anthea, Bathing fetish, Bruise Fetish, Comfort Sex, Comforting Mycroft, F/M, Gang Rape, Hurt/Comfort, Mycroft-centric, Obv real rape isn't romantic, Rape Aftermath, Sharing a Bed, suture fetish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2525084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riotcow/pseuds/riotcow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why shouldn’t we, Mycroft? You want me,” Anthea breathed into the chilly dawn air, her words so faint they were almost concealed by the patter of the rain. “You all but admitted it last night.” </p><p>This is a hurt/comfort style romance with some smut at the end. For some reason, it was just a side of Mycroft that I really wanted to write. No reason it shouldn't be in the same `verse with my other Sherlock stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thousand Count Sheets

It was 12.47 a.m., and a woman who could barely remember her current name tumbled out of a filthy cab and onto a cobblestone driveway which was, in contrast, almost pristine enough to serve dinner upon. Through considerable powers of persuasion, this woman had managed to convince the cabbie to wait a few moments for her to send someone out to settle with him. She had no money, no ID, no phone.

Not that ID meant much in her case. Not any more.

The woman -- she often went by Anthea these days, for the sake of simplicity -- concentrated on walking up the driveway and to the front door of the house without limping, hoping to hide her injuries from the waiting cabbie. The front lights were on when the cab rolled up; the security system had probably already awakened the house’s owner with the automatic alert of a visitor on the premises.

Indeed, the front door swung open as Anthea was trying to convince her quivering legs that they could mount the remaining two steps, and that soon, so soon, she would finally actually be able to rest.

The tall, grim man who emerged didn’t bother to cry her name -- not any of her false names, or her given one, which she assumed that he knew although he had never mentioned it. She was certain that he’d been worried about her: he wore striped pajama pants and a silk dressing gown that had been thrown on so hastily that it wasn’t yet tied, and his thinning auburn hair was in disarray. He swept forward the second he laid eyes upon her, taking her in from her bloody scalp to her mud-encrusted bare feet, and caught her neatly as she began to fall.

“Sir --” she slurred, collapsing ungracefully toward the step, but he pulled her up and, shifting her weight onto his right arm, he took a deep breath and swept his left arm under her knees, picking her up like a child.

Anthea tried to protest, but an absolute tsunami of exhaustion was sweeping over her, and she realized that her vision had gone somewhat fuzzy. Oh no. She was _not_ going to pass out in the arms of Mycroft Holmes.

She didn’t, quite, and she clung to that technicality like it was her very final scrap of dignity. She didn’t have much of that left. She was going to have even less by morning. She was vaguely aware of Mycroft settling her into the corner of a small sofa, and she wrapped her bruised arms around herself and shivered. At least her vision was clearing again.

“The cab --” she croaked.

Mycroft fished his phone out of the pocket of his dressing gown and lifted it to his ear, then instructed someone to settle with the cabbie in front of his residence and see him on his way immediately. Probably Lucas -- no, wait, they would have changed up the security roster after they noticed her disappearance at the start of the day, so no telling who was on point now for the boss. His eyes continued to study her injuries as he dealt with the matter. He pocketed the phone and sat down on the couch beside her, reaching for her wrist, his fingers cool and dry against the thin skin over her pulsepoint. He’d brought her to the sitting room directly off the foyer, and the lighting was  clearly inadequate for a full assessment.

“I’m not going in,” said Anthea, to pre-empt the obvious next order.

Mycroft narrowed his eyes at her, but he didn’t force the issue. “Then I need to bring Dr. Green here. I see three lacerations that are going to require stitches, and I presume there are more. You may have internal injuries as well.” Well. So it was obvious to him that she’d been raped. Of course it would be.

“No way,” she mumbled, and her vision blurred again as her heart began to pound in time with the loud throbbing in her head. She was suddenly, suffocatingly aware of Mycroft’s nearness, of his tall male frame beside her, leaning toward her in his concern. She tried not to flinch away, but she felt her fingers twitch defensively.

He saw it all. He always saw it all. He knew that she was frightened.

“I’m sorry --” Her throat almost wouldn’t let the words past, but she forced them. She was not going to fall apart. She hadn’t gotten to where she was in life by falling apart under stress. She was the PA of the single most powerful man in Britain, and he considered her one of his most valuable assets. This was no worse than many of the crises that she dealt with in the course of her duties.

But Mycroft was backing off without comment, shifting further away on the sofa in order to give her more breathing room. Anthea managed to calm herself, and ran a shaking hand through the rats nest that her hair had become.

She swallowed and then forced herself to look up at him. He was, well, like he always was -- coldly in command of himself. But his eyes were moving over every inch of her, head to toe and back up, and back down. That _wasn’t_ typical of him -- Mycroft Holmes only needed one look, so there wasn’t much point to a second glance for him.

“I don’t want Dr. Green,” she finally managed to say in a voice that was basically somewhere in the ballpark of composed. Her head was still throbbing, and it was hard to think straight, much less construct a sentence. “No one from the office. I couldn’t --” Anthea bit her bottom lip, wincing as it reminded her of the deep split at one corner. “Please, just… no one from the office.”

Mycroft pursed his lips unhappily, then nodded. “Very well. But some of these injuries will require suturing,” he said, then paused. “Dr. Watson perhaps? He’s proven himself to be extraordinarily discreet when it’s called for. He certainly hates the press.”

God, she was just so distractingly aware of Mycroft’s masculinity -- his imposing frame, his formal bearing, even the subtle scent of yesterday’s cologne still clinging to him in the middle of the night. She didn’t know where this was coming from, normally she just sort of ignored everything about him other than his _boss_ -ness. That part of him was enough to keep her fully occupied, thank you very much.

But right now he was half dressed on his couch beside her, Anthea herself was a mud-encrusted wreck, and she was barely staving off an ongoing panic attack over the previously inconsequential fact that he was male. This was ridiculous. She was not falling apart. She had survived worse than this.

“ _No_.” She shook her head. “Look, surely you can just watch a YouTube video and do it yourself? Or you must’ve done them at some point in your life?”

Hands. _Hands_. Mycroft’s hands, on her skin, if she could persuade him to stitch her up himself. But if it wasn’t Mycroft, then it would have to be someone else. Better Mycroft’s hands than anyone else’s.

He was watching her eyes, and she knew that he was reading her train of thought in each minor shift of the musculature. Oh, she knew what it was like to be under the scrutiny of Mycroft Holmes, did Anthea; the only difference between her and everyone else was that she knew how to scrutinize him back nearly as effectively.

She watched him take in what she was asking for -- his help alone, in cleaning and stitching her up, getting her back on her feet or at least back in a state where she could go home alone. He’d seen enough of her physical condition to know that she wasn’t going to be able to bathe without his assistance. She didn’t want anyone from the office to be involved. She intended to hide the assault in its entirety from everyone except him.

It was really only about two seconds, all told. From her statement that she wanted Mycroft to stitch her up himself through a series of conclusions ending in an important new piece of information: They’d done something so horrible to her that she, famously unflappable and the most powerful PA in Britain, was embarrassed.

Anthea, unlike everyone else (except maybe one John Watson) knew how to watch a Holmes back, and out of the corner of the eye was generally best, because of the interference that was created when that Holmes was paying attention to the fact that he was being observed. Lacking her BlackBerry as a prop, she couldn’t use that strategy. But she saw the dawning horror in his eyes, quickly shuttered, and _then_ , and then, oh god, Anthea felt something in her stomach unclench just a little bit for the first time when she saw the rising tide of dangerous _fury_ in his gaze, and then Mycroft took a deep breath and got himself under control again.

But she’d seen it, she knew how to observe him in the fleeting space between his shifting masks, and she’d seen the rage and for a second she began to entertain the notion that maybe, possibly, it was conceivable that after all this time, she was finally actually safe again. The wrath of Mycroft Holmes was a formidable thing, not to be trifled with, and it was now between her and the rest of the world.

“Very well, my dear,” he answered finally, in a resigned voice. Anthea actually had to cast back in her mind for the question: would he suture her lacerations himself? She had been so caught up in everything that she and Mycroft had revealed to one another in the intervening moments that she lost track of what was actually happening -- she was clearly slipping in her advancing age.

“Thank you, sir.” Anthea was well aware that they were going to have to relocate somewhere more tiled in order to get her cleaned up before they could proceed, and so she gathered up all of her considerable will in her trembling arms and she pushed herself to her feet.

He stood up with her, observing her stability critically. “Very well. I’m going to make you some tea and toast. I’ll bring it to you in the master bath. Please get the tap going and then wait for me to come help you. I’ll not have you cracking your skull open on my porcelain.”

Anthea obeyed his orders, reassured by the automaticity of compliance, climbing the stairs slowly and finding that she was slightly more sure on her feet now that she had been indoors, warm and safe for a few minutes. She normally spent a fair amount of time in Mycroft’s bedroom -- she was his Personal Assistant, with an emphasis on the personal, and there had been many occasions when she’d been the one to wake him in the morning. She often briefed him and took directives while he was in this bathroom, shaving with those brisk, precise motions of his. She’d never before had reason to step foot over the threshold into the bathroom herself, however. She couldn’t recall ever having seen anyone but one Mycroft Holmes in this space, and she was certainly the person with the most access to his private life.

It was a miracle of a bathroom.

The floors and towel racks were heated, and there was both a spacious spa-style tub and a walk-in showering area. He had the most luxurious towels and rugs that she’d ever seen, all of them immaculate, in several shades of blue and brown. She turned... no outside access, just the one door. Location secure. Of course Mycroft Holmes’ bathroom was secure.

Anthea let herself exhale as she sat down heavily on the lid of the commode and fell forward against her own knees. Suddenly she remembered how filthy the clothes she was wearing were, and she somehow found the strength to push herself to her feet one more time and start to struggle out of them.

She’d peeled out of her stained and ill-sized hoodie and t-shirt but not out of the muddy track suit pants by the time that Mycroft came through the door. His dressing gown was now tied shut and he carried a tray bearing toast, tea, a glass of water, and a small bowl filled with quite an assortment of pills.

She knew that she was flushed with exertion from undressing, and became even more sure of how ill-equipped she obviously was to handle the task when he looked disapproving again. He placed the tray on the vast real estate of the countertop, and then swooped in on her again, half to hold her up and half to assist her in undressing.

He held her steady as she managed to get out of her pants, then he steered her toward the shower. “If you can stay on your feet for ninety seconds, we can get the worst of the dirt and blood off of you in the shower. Then you might not need two consecutive baths.” He shrugged out of his dressing gown and threw it over the nearest rack, not appearing at all self-conscious to be bare-chested in front of her. He was stocky and somewhat soft at the waist, and though he was not her type, she’d always found his body appealing anyway. It suited him.

He seemed likewise unfazed by her nudity, and helped her to ease herself in beneath a warm, soft spray that wouldn’t aggravate her lacerations or bruises. There they were, Mycroft and Anthea, standing in his shower together, Anthea nude and covered in blood and bruises, Mycroft in his increasingly wet pajama pants. As it often did at awkward moments like this, her mind provided her with the image of them on the front page of tomorrow morning’s newspaper laid out at the Diogenes Club.

His hands were gentle but deft as they carefully soaped her up and rinsed her off. He wasn’t doing a very thorough job -- that would come in the bathtub -- but his fingers and palms moved over every inch of her without hesitation, including tracing soapy fingers lightly along the cleft before her and the one behind her.

Anthea found herself drifting into a state of almost dreamy compliance. So much easier than to think, about what had happened, about the questions that were coming. So much easier than being present, and being strangely, inexplicably frightened by her boss.

She slowly became aware that he had paused in his ministrations, and she reluctantly opened her eyes. Yes, that was definitely her boss, here in the shower with her. He gestured toward her with his chin, suggestive of tilting her head back.

“It will be much easier if I work some of the detritus out of your hair here in the shower, Anthea. Can you stay on your feet for another sixty seconds?”

She managed a confident smile. “Definitely, sir.”

He maneuvered her to where he wanted her relative to the spray of water, then he situated himself in front of her, much too closely. Obligingly she tilted her head back so that he could work the dirt downward out of her long hair.

His sternum, lightly furred with red, was really only centimeters from her nose, and Anthea felt her chest tightening yet again, her heart starting to thud against her ribs. And just a moment ago she’d been so damned relaxed, the exhaustion hollowing her out. She grit her teeth now, fighting down panic yet again, and then realized that Mycroft had paused and was standing quite still with his fingers still worked into her hair. He cleared his throat. “All right?” he asked just loudly enough to be heard over the spray of the water.

Yes. _Yes_. She could do this. For once she found herself wishing that her employer were just an iota less perceptive… it was frustrating to have him so well informed of each little wave of near-panic. She took a few deep breaths, lowering her shoulders, wringing her hands to try to bleed off some of the tension.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s really not you.”

“I understand.” Mycroft resumed his work on her hair, getting the last few centimeters free of any visible filth. She found herself musing on the surety with which his hands performed the task… he’d never had a daughter, nor ongoing lovers, as far as she could tell. Were his hands simply this certain at everything that they did, or did he have reason to be familiar with a woman’s hair? Perhaps a young, long-haired Sherlock?

“You’re ready for a long soak, and some tea and toast, dear. Let’s get you off your feet.”

She was too dumb with fatigue to do anything but comply, and he literally led her by the hand across the spacious bathroom to the oversized tub. He settled her in, made sure that she was secure and not going to drift off, and brought her the tea and toast. He watched her patiently while she took the pills, one by one, without asking what they were. Most of them she knew, anyway.

Mycroft finally left, presumably to find those YouTube videos on suturing or gather some supplies. Anthea sank into the tub with a gratitude that approached tearfulness. It was over, over, over. She was safe; she was with Mycroft. He would never let anyone touch her ever again, she knew it.

Mycroft adjusted the lighting in the bathroom to twilight, and Anthea found herself drifting in a half-doze, from which she roused at irregular intervals to nibble the toast and sip the tea. Her stomach was indeed threatening rebellion… she hadn’t eaten since dinner over twenty-four hours ago. Eventually she got both pieces of toast down and the entire cup of tea, and she found that as a result she felt perhaps ten percent more like a human being.

She was aware of Mycroft occasionally moving in and out of the bathroom, or passing the doorway to keep an eye on her. She had no idea how much more time had passed when he finally returned, dressed in dry pajama pants but still shirtless. He seated himself on the top stair to the raised tub, a comfortable position from which to attend to her, and picked up a washcloth, which he anointed with whatever kind of body wash a man like Mycroft Holmes would own.

Anthea found herself waking up enough to register her nerves, but she just didn’t have the emotional energy to get truly worked up about it. So Mycroft was about to wash her like a baby. Again, if it wasn’t him, it was going to have to be somebody, because there was no way she could wash her own genitals right now.

Well, that thought didn’t calm her down.

Mycroft started at her shoulders and collarbones. There was a deep gash over one collarbone, and she found tears springing to her eyes as he went over it as gently but thoroughly as possible. That was exactly how he proceeded… he was deft, but very, very careful, and he patiently took whatever time she needed to avoid overwhelming her with discomfort.

He worked his way down the planes and curves of her torso, treating her breasts just like the rest of her, then taking a moment to clean the blood and dirt from each arm in turn, and a meticulous five minutes on each hand. He pared beneath her nails, trimmed the torn edges, and scrubbed the filth from the creases in her knuckles.

It was sometime during the second hand that she realized that the tears of a moment ago had returned, only this time it wasn’t because of pain. It was because, well, just because. Because she was safe. Because the person that she trusted the most in the world was taking care of her. Because she’d survived her ordeal clinging to a determination to live to see this moment, and here she was.

Mycroft surely noticed her silent weeping, but he said nothing, simply proceeded with bathing each of her long legs, giving her feet almost the same level of attention that he had given her hands. Maybe he realized that he didn’t need to address her tears, that what he was doing was exactly the response that she needed. His eyes were on his hands as they moved over her battered skin, and it gave her the smallest iota of privacy, she supposed.

He re-situated himself at the head of the tub then, and with a firm hand behind Anthea’s neck, he nudged her down into the water and got her hair thoroughly re-wetted. She sat up, and he worked an appropriate amount of shampoo into her thick, dark locks, his fingers careful on her scalp, probably aware that she had injuries there.

He rinsed it out -- getting it all, despite how easy it was to miss some with Anthea’s long hair. Then he repeated the process with some extremely silky conditioner, even letting it soak in for a bit while he proceeded with carefully cleaning Anthea’s face with a softer, finer washcloth than the one that he had been using on her body.

Her tears had run dry again, and she found herself giving him a small but grateful smile as he cleaned an awful lot of crusted salt from the outside corners of her eyes. He would know that she had cried a lot already today. He smiled back, a sad and worried smile, and again she found herself aware that he would be having his own maelstrom of reactions to what had shown up at his doorstep, no matter how calm he looked on the outside.

Finally he rinsed out the conditioner, then he sat back a bit and stared at her evenly. She knew what had to be coming next. “You want me, what? On the edge of the tub?” Her voice was a bit tight, but her eyes were bright with determination.

He nodded. “Yes, please. Would you like a towel to sit on?” He offered her a thick one, and she took it as she gingerly climbed to her feet in the tub and then put its folds under her arse, propped at the edge of the tub. She leaned back against the tiled wall behind her and spread her legs wide, bracing each heel against the far edge of the tub. She was utterly exposed, but as it was in fact the reality of the situation that he was about to give her a pelvic exam, she didn’t see how using better manners about the situation was going to make it any less awful. Mycroft seemed to be of a similar mind, not at all abashed by her brazenness. It was certainly going to make his job easier.

Mycroft knelt on the steps facing the tub, between where her feet perched on its edge, and by leaning forward he was in a very good position to do the job. He first examined each of her swollen outer labia, reassuring himself that there was nothing more than the general bruising that one might expect after being --

_Forcible rape. Multiple assailants. Probably more than two, not more than five. It depended on just how rough each individual assailant had been._

She was sure he could read it all.

He placed his soft fingertips at her outer labia and spread them slowly, gingerly. She couldn’t keep herself from tensing, she simply couldn’t, but her eyes were screwed shut tightly so that she didn’t have to see him looking, him seeing that...

“Three tears here that will require sutures,” Mycroft informed her calmly. He began to clean her up, then, using soft disposable clothes that he tore out of individual packets. He ran through several of these before switching to cottonballs and q-tips, until finally he was satisfied that she was not going to wind up with an infection. She hung her head back while he worked, eyes shut in concentration. No handful of even Mycroft-grade opiates could make this feel comfortable.

When he was done he even took a moment to sweep the terrain of her vulva all inward, protective, as they usually were, instead of splayed as for an examination. He coaxed her outer labia back together and cupped a whole hand over her mons, as if to consciously close her back up for the moment. For some reason she felt the sting of a tear at her eye again at the odd gesture.

After a second she became aware of his physical absence and found that she didn’t like having him out of arm’s reach. She opened her eyes to look for him, but he was already back at her side, wrapping an oversized, warmed towel around her shoulders. She was truly coming to lament the amount of effort it took to stand up, but she managed to rouse it one last (she hoped) time for One of the Five Worst Evenings of her Life.

“Where next?” she croaked, climbing out of the tub with his hand at her elbow.

“Come with me.” Mycroft steered her across the hall, to the guest bedroom that he kept for the occasional visit from his parents. It was appointed in lavish greens and dark golds, much more to his tastes than theirs, in order to discourage them. “Here, so you can get some sleep once I’m done.”

He directed her to the bed, and she lay down on her stomach first, reveling in the feel of the thousand thread count duvet against her tormented skin. She knew that the questions were going to start now, and she knew that she didn’t have much energy. She was going to have to be careful.

But to her relief, he started working first, giving her time to settle in and catch her breath. He started with her badly torn up feet -- she’d fled the scene without shoes and her difficult path to freedom was evident. He applied ointments liberally and bandages where necessary, carefully debriding the abrasions that looked most at risk for infection.

When his opening salvo came, it was across the bow, letting her know that he meant business. “There are men who are only breathing right now because you require my attention. Who are they?”

“I don’t know.” No point in dissembling, not with Mycroft in this mood, or, really, Mycroft in any other mood.

“You… don’t know? You expect me to believe that?”

She shrugged as much as she could in her prone position, with her left shoulder screaming at her from a dislocation that she’d been forced to reset herself in the field. “It’s the simple truth, sir. Whoever they were, they were… excellent. Highly trained. They just didn’t give me anything to work with,” she lied. It wasn’t easy to lie to Mycroft Holmes, but Anthea had, on occasion, accomplished it.

Well, she was pretty sure she had. Hard to be certain, without asking.

Mycroft worked his way past her calves to her brutalized knees, upon which she had spent a miserable amount of time in the last twenty-four hours. After that, she heard him tear open the first of the sterile suture kits, and was pretty sure that he was going to deal with the deep gash on her left hip -- that, courtesy of an unanticipated nail in a length of wood. It had been one of the worst moments.

Anthea noticed that the bizarre numbness had hijacked her consciousness and she had lost track of the conversation again when he spoke again, startling her. “Do you seriously think that I’m not going to have these people tracked down? My personal feelings on the matter aside, this is a security breach that I can’t possibly allow to go unaddressed.”

He laid his left hand on her thigh, right beside the gash, and then she felt the awful pricking and tugging of the first stitch being placed. Fortunately the drugs that he’d given her were pretty good, and the sensation was more disturbing than painful.

Strangely, Anthea felt more aware of the dry warmth of the palm of his steadying hand than of the needle being eased through her skin. In fact, now she was becoming so relaxed and exhausted that she felt as if she were sinking into the plush mattress beneath her. Mycroft tied off a fourth suture.

“How does it look, sir?” Anthea slurred slightly.

Mycroft exhaled in obvious irritation. “It looks _fine_ ,” he told her. “I _have_ actually done this before... you’ve met my little brother. Now, I understand that you’re tired and that you’ve been through a lot, but if you fall asleep without convincing me that there is a good reason why I’m not opening this investigation, then I promise you that your assailants will be dead by the time that you wake up.”

She roused herself, glancing at him over her shoulder and seeing the deadly earnestness on his face, and she felt her heart sink. She should have known -- she _had_ known, really, but she hadn’t wanted to admit -- that there was no way that Mycroft was going to let this go. She’d just been too muddle-headed to think it out completely. All she wanted was to _sleep_.

Anthea frowned. “Look, I’m just not going to give you anything to go on, sir. You don’t know where to look, or what to look for.”

Mycroft frowned as he ripped open a second suture kit and placed the first stitch on the back of her shoulder. She didn’t know what had caused that one, but she remembered that it had happened during the third rape when she was on her back on the ground --

“You’re not giving me much credit, my dear.” Mycroft interrupted the memory.

“In all honesty, I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping,” she replied, hearing the bone-deep fatigue evident in her voice.

He worked in silence for a while then, finishing her back with a thorough examination of her scalp through her damp hair. His questing fingers honestly felt divine as they moved carefully through her hair, gathering data, and Anthea was almost able to forget whose they were as she allowed herself a moment of genuinely sensual enjoyment. God, his hands were talented...

Mycroft seemed satisfied. “Turn over.”

Anthea did. So far she’d mostly dealt with the fact that she was nude in front of her boss by steadfastly ignoring it, a job that was made somewhat easier by her depleted state. But now she was laying on her back on his guest bed, and he was wearing pajamas and seated on the edge of the bed, and they could see one another.

“Awkward,” said Anthea, raising one eyebrow.

Mycroft allowed a huff of amusement, a slight smile. “It’s nothing. All that matters to me is that you are safe and under my direct protection right now. The security on the house is doubled, by the way.”

She felt an immediate visceral reaction to his words. Safe, in the inner sanctum of the most powerful man in Britain. Anthea had thought that she was about as limp as it got already, but suddenly she found that there was something inside of her that hadn’t yet relaxed, because she felt a rising tension in her stomach and a sheet of red-hot emotion rolling up behind her eyes, and oh god her eyes were watering. No. She was _not_ going to cry.

Again.

“Thank you, sir,” she said evenly, through great effort, dropping her damp eyes from his in embarrassment.

He placed a hand on her thigh. It was a casual gesture, just the hand of a friend in a moment of vulnerability, and maybe it should have seemed inappropriate given that her thigh was bare -- but hell, what was _appropriate_ , at this point?

“You’re welcome, Anthea,” he responded. “Now tell me, do you think there is any chance that I could convince you to call me Mycroft, just for tonight? It’s somewhat disturbing to be called ‘sir’ by a woman while she’s naked.”

Anthea was surprised to find an impish grin crossing her face. She wouldn’t have guessed that she had the strength for it left. “Oh, really? You’ll recall that you’ve given me a great deal of access to your private life --”

“Stop.” Mycroft wasn’t grinning, but she could tell that he was actually amused. “Now you’re making matters worse on purpose.”

“I’m not sure that I _can_ call you Mycroft. But I suppose I could stop calling you sir...” she counter-offered, lips still quirked. Her hands moved restlessly on her stomach, and Mycroft was reminded that he’d noted a couple of gashes on her abdomen that were pretty severe and apparently still bleeding slowly.

“Anthea, please just agree to call me Mycroft,” he said in exasperation as he leaned toward the table to pick up the cleansing and antiseptic wipes.

“Very well, _Mycroft_ ,” she agreed with a pout, and saw his shoulders release just a fraction of the tension that he was carrying. “... _if_ you’ll call me Elizabeth,” she heard herself adding, to her own surprise.

To his, also, judging by his expression. “Your birth name? Certainly. I had no idea that you might prefer that when we’re alone.”

She hissed lightly as he debrided a bad patch on the front of her thigh. “Well, I wouldn’t, not under any circumstances other than these. And these are obviously circumstances that are never, ever going to recur.” She turned her head to the side and let her eyes drift closed.

“They certainly won’t,” Mycroft muttered in agreement, tearing open two more suture kits in order to close the lacerations on her abdomen. These were clearly deliberate, not incidental, damage. Her breasts had a number of angry bite marks on them and her nipples were bruised and raw, but didn’t require any more attention than a wipe down with antiseptic and a dab of ointment where one sharp eyetooth had managed to break skin. No stitches or debridement, for which she was grateful. She had so little to be grateful for tonight, she’d take it in the little things where she could.

It was as he was working on her hands, cleaning out the deep gashes on her knuckles, that he finally spoke again. “Just tell me why, Elizabeth,” Mycroft said. “If I understood _why_ you don’t want me to find these people and kill them, maybe then I could consider it.”

She had started to doze, and her eyelids flickered a bit as she came alert at his words. Their gazes locked for a moment over their clasped hands. She had been silly to ever think that Mycroft would let this go with her ill-conceived lie… she realized with some relief that at this point she would be better off telling the stupid, awkward truth.

“Okay… very well. I was very, very stupid, and I’m sorry.” She made herself hold his gaze as she confessed, unwilling to let herself off the hook with regards to seeing his disappointment. She felt a blush rise on her cheeks. Damn this exhaustion. Normally she could have controlled that.

“It was random,” she explained. “Just some yobs who’d goaded each other into misbehaving in a way that none of them would have dared alone. There was no political motive behind the attack, so it doesn’t pose a security risk to the office or to you to ignore it. I just want to put it behind me and move on with my life.”

She saw flashes of genuine fury in his eyes as she spoke… she would have seen it even if he was maintaining his facade better than this, but tonight it was right there for all the world to see, in the tightness at the outside of his grey eyes.

“If it was _random_ , then the men who did this to you would have done it before and will do it again. We can’t ignore that.” He basically had one final gash to stitch on her collarbone before finishing up with her face and finally…

“Yes, thank you, Mycroft. Or you could actually trust me to clean up my own messes.” She felt her heartbeat picking up again as she said it.

He blinked at her, twice, rapidly, processing. “Elizabeth, do you mean to say --”

“I mean to say _nothing_ , Mycroft, except that it would be nice if you just trusted me. All I need is a few more stitches and a good night’s sleep, and I’ll be right as rain, trailing you everywhere at your left elbow, BlackBerry in hand. For now, could you please finish up so that I can get some sleep?” Her voice wasn’t actually as sharp as her words, and her eyelids fluttered shut as she finished her last sentence.

He placed the five stitches over her collarbone with motions that had become more deft in the course of the last thirty minutes. She couldn’t help but wince each time he forced the needle through her torn, ragged flesh… she wondered if it was possible that the pain meds he’d given her during her bath were wearing off already.

He didn’t seem inclined to press the argument they’d been having, and she wondered if there was any chance that that meant that she had won. Finally he tied off the last suture on her shoulder, then disposed of the biohazard in the awaiting sharps container and lowered his hands to his lap for a moment.

“I think it’ll be easier for me to take care of your face if you sit up, Elizabeth. I saved these sutures for last so that my work would be the neatest."

She managed a grateful smile as she struggled to get back up into a seated position after such a long period of jelly-like lounging. He adjusted the bright work lamp that he’d brought into the room so that it was in her eyes.

“Apologies,” Mycroft muttered, pulling some fresh suturing kits to the front of his bedside tray.

“No, I’d rather you have the light,” she responded, closing her eyes against the glare.

He leaned in close enough that she could just feel his warm breath on her ear as he started with her split eyebrow, neatly placing the stitches to be hidden among the hairs where he could. She again felt little stirrings of panic at his nearness, at that faintly musky male scent of his, and she began to count her breaths carefully.

She didn’t exactly see but could somehow feel him quirk his eyebrow down at her. He tugged the third and final stitch into place and tied it off.

“I have a proposal,” Mycroft said solemnly.

She squinted at him out of one eye. “What kind of proposal?”

He took a slow breath, sizing her up carefully. “I will not pursue identification of your perpetrators for now, and agree not to do so in the future without your permission. I also agree not to press you on the issue for the next three months.” He paused. “In return, you will speak with Dr. Cushing, or another psychologist of your choosing, regarding this assault and your recovery from it, every week for the next three months.” He looked at her steadily as he outlined the terms of his deal, but then he turned his attention to readying a new suture kit, letting her consider his terms out from under the force of his regard.

Anthea exhaled tightly, feeling torn. Mycroft off her back sounded good, but talking to a psychologist... “Look. Not a shrink. I just can’t do that, not even with Kate,” she responded. He gave her a frustrated look and raised his forefinger to her chin, tilting and angling her head under the light the way that he wanted it.

It was… challenging, to control her feelings about his proposal and the threatening panic of having a man so close to her at the same time. She realized that her trembling at his nearness wasn’t helping her case. She cast about. “Just not a shrink, okay, Mycroft? _You_. Half an hour, every week, for twelve weeks. Over tea. You can be assured of my compliance and monitor my progress.”

His fingers didn’t falter in the manipulation of the needle through her skin, though she saw the surprise on his face. That was twice in one night that she’d managed to surprise him. Evidently she wasn’t really acting like herself. Go figure.

“I am sincerely honored that you would trust me for such a duty,” Mycroft said slowly. “However, you know I’m not trained --”

Anthea interrupted him. “I know, but look, Mycroft, it’s not exactly rocket science, which, by the way, you’d be perfectly capable of if you cared to educate yourself. All that’s really important is that I don’t try to pretend it didn’t happen, and that I deal with emotions and reactions as they arise. If we have a weekly check-in scheduled, you can make sure of that.”

He didn’t seem surprised by her knowledge, probably because he was inside of her flat not infrequently, and thus he knew that she spent much of her spare time populating her shelves with books on psychology and political science. It was part of how she made herself invaluable to him.

His fingers moved gingerly across the soft skin of Anthea’s cheek as he placed each suture with the utmost care. He cleared his throat. “Very well, but I‘m afraid that I still have a concern about your counter-proposal. I believe -- well, my understanding is, that if I were to play this role for you, that you would need to share with me the details of the assault that you experienced. And --” He trailed off for a moment, searching for words, something that never happened to Mycroft Holmes.

Anthea lifted a hand to block the light from her eyes so that she could peer at him. “Perhaps. That’s usually a part of the process. But Mycroft… I trust you.”

He closed his eyes briefly at that, and when he opened them again, they shone -- just for a fraction of a second -- with some emotion. Something she’d never quite seen before in her boss’s eyes, except maybe, occasionally, at moments when she’d known that his mind was on his troublesome little brother…

His expression was almost grave now. “Elizabeth... of course I would listen to you tell the story, if I knew that it would help you for me to hear it. That is not my cause for concern, my dear.” There. The last stitch to her cheekbone, seven there, more than anywhere else. That had been a whopper of a backhand, with that heavy silver ring on his finger --

She dragged her thoughts back to the present. “What, then?”

His eyes and then his thumb were on her lip, just below the deep split, considering the tear and how best to place the sutures. Yes, Mycroft’s grey eyes were blazing openly now, with cold, horrible fury. “The problem is that I do not think that I could hear the details of this, and continue to refrain from murdering those responsible.”

Oh. _Oh_. Of course. Anthea raised her fingers to Mycroft’s wrist, lowering his hand away from her for a moment, interrupting his examination and ducking her head to catch his broken gaze with hers. “Mycroft.” She said his name softly.

He looked irritated. “Yes?”

She took a deep breath. “You _are_ about to read every detail of it, in a moment, on my body. You do realize that I need more stitches, don’t you?” she asked him in her gentlest voice, the one that he’d only ever heard her use with small children or, very very rarely, with him.

Mycroft looked vaguely nauseated, and sighed. “Of course you do, Elizabeth. I simply -- I don’t understand how you can expect me to ignore what’s been done to you. You --” Here he cast about for a moment, clearly unused to editing his words in this way, but visibly thwarted in expressing what he wanted in a way that sounded more acceptable. Finally with a look of exasperation he forged ahead: “You are _mine_ , Elizabeth. And some other men _dared_ to lay their hands on you. That’s not acceptable.”

His voice was hurt and angry and conflicted all at once, she could clearly hear all three. His words, however, took a moment to sink in, and she quickly realized why he’d been trying to find some other way to say it.

She swallowed against a strange lump in her throat. “This isn’t 1950, or for that matter 1850, and I’m your _PA_ , not your property,” she told him, feeling obligated to object, and he narrowed his eyes at her. She wasn’t even exactly sure how she really felt about what he’d slipped and said... about the possessiveness that he’d betrayed.

“Yes, fine, obviously not my property, yes, _my assistant_ ,” Mycroft’s tone was sharp. “That’s what I meant. You’re _mine_.”

“Well, but not… not sexually. I’m just saying that it doesn’t extend to sexually. Obviously. I mean, I’ve had lovers --”

He didn’t break her gaze, though his was now carefully shuttered. “I’ve allowed that, as it appears to make you happy.”

She slowly licked her dry lips, avoiding the gash. “And because… _you_ didn’t want…” Here Anthea trailed off, realizing that she really wasn’t sure if she wanted to proceed.

Mycroft tilted his head at her quizzically. “I didn’t want… _what_ _?_ _”_

She swallowed, tired of the sound of her blood pounding in her ears in fear. She’d heard it far too much in the last twenty-four hours. “Me?” she finally completed the sentence reluctantly. “You didn’t want me, for yourself, sexually? So you haven’t minded me having lovers?”

He leaned back from her very slightly, as if considering her more closely. “Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” he told her in an emotionless voice. “I _said_ that I presumed that it made you happy.”

She shut her mouth, then, not sure what to say next, and he took that as a sign to tilt her head back again, adjust the bright light, and tear open a new kit for the sutures that her lip was going to require. He placed them quickly, politely ignoring her careful efforts to manage the ever-threatening panic, as if he were now in a hurry to be done. Finally he dropped the needle into the sharps container, followed by peeling off his gloves and immediately snapping a new pair into place.

“Let’s finish up, shall we?” he asked her with raised brows. Without a word, her teeth worrying her bottom lip on the untorn side, Anthea forced herself to slowly lay back and part her thighs there on the bed.

“Turn sideways, here, across the top of the bed. Take these pillows -- there. Thank you.” He got her where he wanted her, slid a pillow underneath her bum, and angled the light so that it would shine past his shoulder.

Anthea was terrified at the idea of seeing the look on his face, but she simply couldn’t help herself. He leaned in, his brow drawing tight at the sight of the extensive bruising to her outer genitals. His fingers gently settled on her swollen labia and eased them apart, and because he was who he was, he did not gasp in horror at the sight of the damage that had been done to her.

Her fingers twisted in the bedsheets below her. “Please, just do it as quickly as you can. I’m not excited about this part.”

He took a deep breath. “Elizabeth --”

“No. Please don’t tell me it’s too much for you. Just clean me up and stitch me back together one tear at a time. Please, Mycroft.”

She kept her eyes screwed shut against the awful pain, and he worked with brisk motions, tearing open each sterile kit with practiced motions now, and placing the stitches with confident fingers, easing his way inside of her as far as he could reach. It was completely awful, and Anthea did her best to relax and let him inside of her so that he could try to sew her back together. In the end she had another twelve sutures to add to her bragging rights.

“Done,” Mycroft announced in heavy tones, sitting back. His brow was lightly damp, but he did not deign to genuinely sweat. “But I am not at all convinced that there is not damage that I can’t see or reach. We know nothing about the state of your cervix.”

By this point, Anthea just didn’t have the energy to address the point, and had to resort to hoping that he would just drop it after she fell asleep in about three seconds. He peeled off his final pair of gloves, disposing of the last of the biohazard into the sharps container, and seemed to be generally preparing to leave her to sleep.

She surprised him by grasping his wrist as he started to stand. He paused, looking down at her. He’d already snapped off the high-wattage work lamp that he’d moved into the room for the occasion, and so there was only the light of a single tastefully shaded bulb now.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone,” Anthea said in a voice that sounded, she knew, utterly wretched.

He blinked down at her, then licked his lips thoughtfully. “You need to sleep, Elizabeth.”

“I know. Please stay.” She wasn’t willing to be coy about asking for this. Either he would agree or he wouldn’t.

Still Mycroft hesitated. Then, finally: “Very well.” Anthea sighed in relief as he rounded the bed and peeled back the covers on the far side.

She was laying atop them, but he carefully worked them down from underneath her without expecting her to do much more than squirm cooperatively. Then he drew them back up over top of her now, with his own warm body sandwiched in next to her.

“Close to me,” she muttered, and Mycroft pressed in beside her, so that she could feel the great length of him nestled up against her reassuringly. His hand, warm and uncalloused, settled on her bare stomach in a proprietary fashion, and she had just a second to remember that she was still nude before heavy, deep sleep swept in on her with irresistible force.

* * *

The next thing that she knew there was dim light creeping in around the edges of the heavy velvet curtains, and the soft patter of London rain against the windowpanes. She was curled on her side, Mycroft snugged in behind her, his breath -- deep, even, definitely asleep -- on the back of her neck.

But almost as soon as she realized that she was awake -- her mind already casting back to the strange conversation that she’d had with her employer just a few hours ago -- she felt the shift in his breathing against the back of her neck. Now he was awake too, his senses alerting him immediately that his bedmate was conscious.

She was surprised by how much better she felt, given that they could only have been sleeping for a few hours at most. She was once again grateful for a sturdy constitution that served her well in her line of work.  Mycroft was something of a human furnace, and his warm feet were pressed up against her chilly ones under the comforter. They both lay in silence for several long moments, neither of them moving or speaking, enjoying their closeness. His upper arm was still thrown around her waist now that she was on her side, and his fingertips brushed against her belly.

“When was the last time that you slept with someone?” Anthea asked, drawing lazy lines up and down his forearm with her fingers.

He didn’t need to think about it. Like her, he kept his voice pitched low, just loud enough to be heard over the soothing sound of rain on glass. “The last time that you and I shared a bed, almost a year ago. That crummy little hotel in Kosovo. You?”

“The same.” She wondered what it meant, that neither of them ever shared a bed except with each other. She’d kept a few lovers over the years, two of them for a good long while even, but she never let them stay overnight. Her job demanded that she be available and at peak functioning too early and too late for her to take any risks with the few precious hours of restorative sleep that she did get.

Her general level of wellness may be much improved, but the pain medication he’d given her earlier was starting to wear off, and she was slowly rediscovering every bruise and laceration that covered her battered body. She groaned, gritting her teeth for a moment as a wave of discomfort swept through her. Everything between her thighs was beginning to burn like fire.

He pulled his heat away from her and she made a sound of protestation. “More meds,” Mycroft reassured her, and reappeared at her back with a glass of room temperature water and a small white bowl full of pills, all of which Anthea obediently downed.

He settled himself fully against her back again without her having to ask this time, and she snuggled back into him, tugging his arm back around her bare waist. There was no denying how good this felt. She knew that she was literally the only person in the world who saw this side of Mycroft Holmes, the only person with whom he felt safe enough...

“Elizabeth… what are you doing?” he asked warningly, his lips against her hair.

She realized that her bruised bum was nestled into his groin, and that his body was starting to respond. It wasn’t even the first time that _this_ had happened -- they’d wound up sleeping in close quarters on a handful of occasions over the years, and sometimes in the mornings Mycroft’s body did what every man’s body did. It had never bothered Anthea -- or seemed to bother Mycroft himself -- before now. But then, the previous times, she hadn’t been actively pressing her arse into him when it happened either. She supposed that that was what he meant to be asking her about.

She froze then, faced with this threatening reminder that the body that was giving her so much comfort and reassurance may be Mycroft’s, but it was also, demonstrably, a man’s. Her heart started to thump against her ribs, and this time she was genuinely unsure if it was fear or arousal that was elevating her pulse.

He must have felt it too, for he pulled away from her, just perceptibly, a few millimeters, but in her hypervigilant state she noticed. The subtle shift left her feeling unexpectedly bereft, and it was that more than anything that made her realize what she suddenly, badly wanted from him.

She closed the distance again, pushing back deliberately, and Mycroft sucked in air lightly. His hand tightened at her waist, and she turned her head toward him, glancing over her shoulder in response to his heavier breathing.

“Why shouldn’t we, Mycroft? You want me,” she breathed into the chilly dawn air, her words so faint they were almost concealed by the patter of the rain. “You all but admitted it last night.”

She moved her small hand over the large one at her waist, intertwining her fingers with his, and urging his warm palm up her ribcage to the underside of her breast. She tried to drag his hand onto her breast, but he refused to allow her any more leeway. It was then that she realized that his hand… his hand was _trembling_ , just slightly.

Anthea didn’t think that she had ever seen Mycroft’s hands tremble in any situation that didn’t involve his little brother. Mycroft didn’t care enough about anyone or anything else to be that affected...

 _Oh_.

Anthea reflected on that.

Mycroft cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was strained. “You’ve just been through --”

“Shut up, _sir_ ,” she interrupted, because she was pretty sure that that barely perceptible tremor in his hand actually meant that he was waging some sort of desperate war internally. How had she missed this all these years; more importantly, why the hell had he hidden it? This wasn’t just a little crush that he had on her; no, _no_ , she knew Mycroft Holmes better than that.

Anthea twisted abruptly in the circle of his arms, ignoring the screaming of her muscles, and slid her upper leg over his. She hooked her bare foot behind his knees and pulled herself against him, winding her arms around his neck. She ran her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, causing him to shudder with a barely audible sound in the back of his throat.

There was no plausible deniability in this embrace. This was not colleagues making the best of cramped accommodations, nor a woman turning to a friend for help and comfort. Anthea pressed herself against her boss, sliding her mouth urgently against the underside of his stubbled jawline, grazing him with her teeth for just a second. She heard a strange sound come from him in response to that last, and bemusedly she realized that she’d just heard Mycroft Holmes _whimper_.

Oh, this was _excellent_.

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” he hissed in a tone that was trapped exactly halfway between chiding and pleading. His hands were on her ribcage now, holding her tightly where she was, as if he didn’t know whether to pull her closer or push her away. She was fully aware that the burgeoning tumescence of earlier had evolved into an erection that now occupied a considerably increased amount of the space between their bodies.

But her fingers were still trailing over the column of the back of his neck, over the ridges of his skull where his hair was fine and soft as a child’s, stroking the rim of his ear. Mycroft suddenly let go of her ribcage and instead reached up and wrapped his fingers around both of her wrists, tugging her inquisitive fingers away from his nape and down onto his chest and capturing them there. His breathing was fast and light, and his heart thudded against the outsides of her hands. She realized that he was showing her his racing heart on purpose.

“Just hold _still_ for one moment. _Please_ ,” Mycroft whispered in a rough voice that she’d never heard from him before, and Anthea finally subsided against him. It was difficult to convince her ravenous body, but she knew now that it was going to be okay, because she realized what that voice meant: Mycroft was giving in. He just wanted her to let him get a handle on himself first. She could do that.

His grip on her loosened, and she realized that he’d been holding her wrists hard enough to compress the small bones together. She gasped with relief as the discomfort ended, and she peered up at Mycroft’s shadowed face and saw his eyes tightly shut against her, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Anthea made herself relax. Made herself soft and pliant against his length. Waited patiently. Finally his brow smoothed and he opened his eyes, and Anthea had to catch her breath, so surprised was she by the open expression of desire on his face as he gazed at her.

“This is a terrible idea. I have always known that this would be a terrible idea,” Mycroft explained, slipping his left forearm underneath her neck and rolling her onto her back beneath the comforter, beneath him. “And I have always known that I would not be able to say no to you if you wanted this, and that is why I have always hidden this from you. This is going to complicate _everything_.” Mycroft propped most of his weight on his left side and slid his right knee over her near leg, leaving just enough of his weight on her to press her gently down into the mattress without aggravating her injuries.

She groaned, ignoring his griping and instead concentrating on how amazing he felt, letting herself push back up against him in order to achieve some primal sense of satisfaction. He didn’t do anything for a long moment, hungrily observing her reactions to being pinned beneath him like this. Grey eyes, usually so cool, always so calculating, but right now they were staring at her with undisguised _want_. Anthea found herself writhing, straining upward, desperate for more...

His expression turned exasperated for a moment. “Darling, I spent an _hour_ putting all of those stitches into you, and I’ll be damned if I am going to allow you to tear a single one of them out.” He paused in consideration, then he suddenly seemed to come to some sort of conclusion and his expression softened. “Very well, let’s do it this way: If you will just stay still, my dear, I will reward you by making love to you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He was using words that she would never have expected to hear fall from his lips. She found herself going silent and still and wide-eyed, and he chuckled at her somewhat ruefully. “Do you know?” he said, “I’ve woken up from this dream so many times that it’s hard to believe that I’m not about to wake up right now.”

He lowered his head, then, and put his mouth to the swell of her breast, lips and tongue exploring carefully across the bruised and scraped terrain of her torso. Anthea let out a long, low moan of relief, sinking into the mattress beneath him. He took his time, giving lavish attention to the crease of her breasts against her ribcage, to the valley of her sternum and the hollow of each clavicle, brushing dry lips lightly across her stitches, open mouth and wet tongue soothing her skin where it was angry.

His hands were flat on the bed, all his focus on the one point of contact between them, and she knew that learning her was exactly, exactly what he was doing right now. Memorizing her, in case this never happened again. With his mouth, his tongue, so much more exquisite in sensitivity than even his fingertips. She knew that he must have had a map of the topography of her body in his mind for many years, and that he would be updating that with better, richer data with every flick of his tongue.

Anthea needed to tilt her head back, she needed to arch her back, it was primal and it had to happen, but she was mindful of Mycroft’s admonishment that what he was doing to her with his mouth was a reward for staying still. Accordingly she controlled herself, turning her head slowly, shifting her hips slowly, incrementally, careful to avoid strain on any sutures.

He didn’t pause in his ministrations in order to tell her to stop, so she took that as permission to move in this careful fashion. Over a long moment she eased her head to one side against the pillow, her forefinger gripped between her front teeth, the long lines of her throat exposed down to her collarbone. His mouth wandered there, tongue pressing against her pulsepoint for a long moment, teeth grazing lightly along her jawline exactly as she had done to him some moments ago.

He was turning it into some agonizing kind of slow motion, and Anthea could have sworn that she felt him smile against the side of her throat as he must have read the frustration directly off of her body. He nuzzled in against the far side of her face, tipping her head back, back all the way until her chin was tilted up, presenting him with the column of her throat. He nibbled his way down, then gripped her gently with his teeth, tugging lightly.

Anthea groaned. Her fingers had been twisted in the bedsheets, and she couldn’t help it anymore, she raised them to his shoulders to grasp at him.

“No.” His mouth paused; his voice was deep, even. She lowered her hands, and his lips found her skin again.

Anthea utterly lost track of time as she struggled to hold herself mostly still there on his luxurious Egyptian cotton bedsheets. She squeezed her thighs together as the terrible ache between her legs took on a whole new tenor, as her panting underlined the sound of morning rain on the window, as Mycroft Holmes made love to her using his mouth with the quiet, slow determination of a decade of unrequited and concealed longing.

Her world stretched out as she sank fully into the realm of pure, exquisite sensation, of his strong tongue and his sharp teeth and his nimble lips and the falling rain and these sheets on bruised skin and her hair on her shoulders. Anthea’s eyes were closed, her mouth hanging open, and at some point she had begun vocalizing freely. Nothing that should have been audible from the hallway, but she presumed that his name and some holy sounding nonsense had been pouring forth from her mouth for some time.

In such fashion minutes may have faded into hours by the time that Anthea found herself provoked beyond what she could endure. She began to mewl, her slow writhing becoming a little less restrained, and Mycroft paused and pressed a kiss against the bite that he’d just left in the hollow of her shoulder.

His lips, once again at her ear. She was beginning to think it was just an excuse to bury his senses in her hair. “Are you sure that you want to orgasm, darling? I fear it might hurt more than it relieves, in your current state.” His voice was low, velvety… this Mycroft was fully, one hundred percent in control of himself. This was not the man who’d just nearly been overcome at the opportunity to explore her body. Somewhere along the way, he’d gotten his wits back about him.

She whimpered in sheer frustration, knowing that he was right. He smiled into her hair, she could definitely hear it in his voice this time. “You didn’t think about this, when you asked me to start this, did you?”

She still didn’t quite dare to touch him, though it was all she could do to restrain the impulse. Anthea looked him square in the eye, thrilled and emboldened by something she saw there. “ _You_ could come for _me_ , Mycroft.”

He visibly caught his breath, and the light in the room had come up enough now that she could see the blush on his cheeks even in the gloom. _Yes_ , she cheered inwardly, pleased that he hadn’t quite expected that. Had assumed that _she_ was the only one being sexualized here. Anthea was riding high on a tide of endorphins and hormones, and she managed to conjure her most potent pout in spite of the last twenty-four hours of her life.

“Come on, Mycroft.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re right, we’d be risking one of your precious stitches if we bring me off. But both you and I need some kind of relief before we face the horror that is Thursday, don’t we? Your hands and mouth have been on every inch of my body tonight. Your turn.”

He stared at her, his eyes serious, and she found the smile fading from her face. She thought back to the confessions he’d made, the battle he’d fought with himself over touching her… Anthea raised a hand to his cheek and cupped it in her palm, and for some reason it spite of everything that had happened so far, she was still surprised when he tilted into her touch, his eyelids fluttering shut for a brief moment.

“On second thought, you've already had your turn with being the vulnerable one tonight, haven’t you?” Anthea mused softly, and he quirked her a tired smile.

“Well, I’m pleased to inform you that I already had a solution to your dilemma in mind, as I’m very smart,” Mycroft responded, his voice wry. He suddenly moved down her body, distracting her attention from whatever she’d been about to say next.

One second later, he nuzzled into the furry patch at the apex of her thighs, which Anthea allowed to part with a surprised sigh. Her hand settled instantly but lightly onto the top of his head, but both of his were occupied by a firm grip on Anthea’s hipbones, pressing her squarely into the bed so that her hips could not shift even a degree against his mouth.

He parted her slowly, with breath and the tip of his tongue sliding down her cleft, carefully opening her, but then only pressing _inward_ directly over her clit. He avoided any movement downward from there, refusing to put any pressure on her internal tears. The broad flat of his tongue and a series of lavish, nibbling, hungry kisses proved effective, however, and she would have been thrusting up against his face if only he would have allowed her to thrust.

The restriction only made her body want it more, and when he began to suckle lightly at her clit, Anthea felt everything in her tighten up in a huge, hot clench, all of the endless places that his mouth had already been. From her nipples to her throat, from her bellybutton directly downward to her aching clit, Anthea felt her thighs tighten over his shoulders -- when had that happened anyway? -- as she started to orgasm against Mycroft’s open mouth.

“ _Mycroft_ ,” she cried his name loudly, well aware that they were under some level of auditory surveillance even in here and simply not giving a damn. She’d write a memo to the entire staff for this. He pressed his tongue hard against her, drinking in every drop of her, licking her clean, licking her through her aftershocks and down again, not showing the least inhibition about burying his face in her fur. Anthea shuddered within his grip, and he eased up on her hips as she finally wound back down into a limp assembly of limbs.

He rested his forehead against her hip for a moment, collecting himself. Anthea ran her fingers into his now sweat-damp hair and tugged lightly, bringing him up and tucking him in under her arm. Mycroft let out a long, shuddering sigh, closing his eyes for a moment as they both came to a complete rest for the first time in several hours. She was well aware that dawn had come and gone, that their lovely little early morning shower had turned into a miserable-sounding downpour, and that this was the hour that both she and Mycroft typically arrived at the office.

“They know you’re here, and that we’re not to be disturbed until I check in,” Mycroft muttered, his fingers wrapping around her hip and holding onto her possessively.

Anthea glanced down at him. “It’s got to be seven. We have to check in.” She trailed her fingers into the hair behind his ears, not wanting to leave this bed in the slightest.

“ _I_ have to check in,” corrected Mycroft. “ _You_ need another six hours of sleep and a full breakfast before you’re going to be the least bit of use to me. I will stay here and work out of my home office for the morning. We will not discuss whether we, _together_ will go into the office today until after at least tea time. Do you understand me, Anthea?”

She grinned tiredly at the sudden emergence of her employer. “Anthea, again, is it? Then I suppose the only possible answer is ‘yes, sir.’”

He glared at her, sitting up in the bed. “This is going to be a nightmare,” he groused. Then he looked down at her, and his features went soft at whatever it was that he saw there. She wasn’t sure, but then, she wasn’t quite sure that she fully understand _how_ he saw her anymore. He’d hidden this all so well. It was going to take some time to make sense of it.

Then she saw the anger return too, as he remembered the abduction that had triggered all of the events of the last five hours. “Oh, bloody hell, Elizabeth. What have I allowed you to do? You know that you’re going to regret this in the cold light of day.”

She frowned up at him, reaching out to put her hand over his. “Please give me a little credit,” she said firmly. “That beating that I took in Marrakesh three years ago was worse than this, and you weren’t all tied into knots over that. I’m still capable of making decisions, you know.”

“They didn’t rape you in Marrakesh.” He reached out and brushed her hair away from her forehead as if he couldn’t quite help himself. “This is different.”

She frowned up at him. “Well, Mycroft, seeing as how it’s my own twat that we’re discussing, I’m actually the one who gets to decide that.” She grinned in the face of his disapproving glare. “I’ve already admitted that I’m probably going to have some trauma symptoms in the next couple of weeks. I did after Marrakesh, you remember, so it stands to reason that I will this time too. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

His eyes moved over her face, observing her expression closely. “Well, you didn’t exactly seem to be thinking it through. This morning, I mean,” he observed.

She narrowed her eyes at him, and took a moment to think about it now, chewing absently on the intact side of her lower lip. “Maybe not in the way that _you_ think things through,” she finally admitted. “But you’re going to have to trust me, Mycroft. This is actually good for both of us.” She pushed down the comforter and sheets, exposing her nude, battered torso to him, and he didn’t try to hide that his eyes were drawn downward, devouring the sight of her.

“We’ve crossed the line now, sir,” Anthea said, watching him come back to a semi-erect state in response to her exposure.

“Are you trying to keep me in bed?” he asked in a perfectly even tone.

She looked torn. “I don’t think I have another round in me right now, though I’d love one after I’ve next woken up and brushed my teeth, thank you very much. After a shower, a meal, and a full night’s sleep tonight, I’d like to take you up on an entire sex _holiday_ , as your brother says. Everyone else does it, why can't we? The whole office knows that I get the flu every time you do. It’s a hazard of being a PA; you share your boss's sickbed. We’ll just make it literal this time.” Anthea trailed one hand lightly down her body as she spoke, switching between stroking her curves in deliberate invitation and curious tracing of her various soon-to-be scars.

“You want me to take an entire day away from the office tomorrow to have sex with you?” He was still attempting to sound indifferent about it, but she laughed at her certainty that he very much wanted to agree to her idea and was seriously debating whether Mycroft Holmes would do such a thing or not.

“Kind of, yeah. What’s so ludicrous about that?” She gave him a flirtatious smile. “And I actually preferred when you called it ‘making love.’”

His brow knitted briefly, in worried confusion. “You… did?” It was a strange moment of raw insecurity, and Anthea’s smile faded.

She squeezed his hand. “Yes, Mycroft. Of course I did.”

And then he gave her a completely assured one-sided grin and leaned in toward her, bracing his hands on the bed and speaking seductively. “Very well then. In that case, please allow me to rephrase the question: You want me to take an entire day away from the office tomorrow in order to spend it  _making love_ to you?”

Dear god. Anthea couldn’t quite breathe, her gaze trapped in his, her stomach fluttering in a most distracting fashion. “Yes. Yes, please, Mycroft. _That_.”

She was the one who had exposed herself, was laying spread out before him in all her battlescarred glory, and Mycroft abruptly dipped his face into the damp recesses of her body. She squeaked as he swirled the tip of his tongue around her clitoris for a few seconds, coaxing it out of its hiding place just a bit, and then gently sucked at the little nub, grazing at it with the very edge of his teeth in a delicate maneuver.

She couldn’t help it, she bucked up against his chin and he cursed, wiping his mouth with his fingers. She laughingly started to apologize, but he waved it off. “My fault, dear. I’m clearly going to have to strap you down if I’m to keep up such attentions for a full day.”

Harder breathing, knot of pleasure and hot wet want down in the core of her. She knew that she was giving herself away to him, but then she’d never had any chance of doing anything else.

“I think I’d like that.” Anthea swallowed hard, pressed her thighs together again. “Would you?”

He gave an amused chuckle at that. “Would I like to strap this breathtaking body of yours to my _own_ bed tomorrow and spend the entire day learning every square millimeter of it? _Making love_ to you at my own pace, with my own preferred level of attention to detail, free from all the distractions with which we’ve contended tonight?” Mycroft’s eyes shone their bluest, their most human right now.

“I -- Mycroft. You know. It’s, well --” She couldn’t believe she was stammering like this. What was wrong with her? “It’s going to be at least a month or two until I can actually --”

Mycroft cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Please stop right there. You have absolutely no _idea_ how creative I am if you’re worried about that one silly limitation, and you’re as-of-yet still ill-informed regarding my preferred repertoire. I would have thought that this morning might have opened your eyes a bit regarding that.”

She blushed as she remembered crying his name in the dawn light, and the startling way that her voice had cut through the pleasant susurration of the rain outside. The staff would be talking about it right now. On the other hand, Mycroft looked like he might take her up on her insane proposal.

He narrowed his eyes. “One condition: we both work a full day on Saturday, your recovery permitting.”

She looked put out for a moment, and then a new thought occurred to her and she brightened. “But that means that Sunday is still a day off, right? I mean, as much as it ever is.”

Mycroft was rising and getting ready to go in search of his phone and his laptop. He turned and took in her hopeful expression, and he let out an honest burst of laughter.

“What?” Anthea felt herself pouting again a little bit. She was going to have to watch that… that might have worked with previous boyfriends, but she doubted that Mycroft Holmes was going to be so easily manipulated.

“ _You_. Anthea. Elizabeth. Whoever the hell you are.” The laughter finally subsided, but he still had a look of open amusement on his face as he gestured at her. “You’re completely serious about this. Not a _glimmer_ of interest in all these years, and then you turn up on my doorstep last night and now… this? Might I be so bold as to ask you directly: why the sudden change of heart?”

She was indeed surprised by this directness… he’d never shown any evidence of it before, not in interpersonal matters between them. But then, she’d noticed some changes in his relationship with his younger brother, in the years that Sherlock was in exile and the time since he’d returned to London. Maybe Mycroft really was softening up a bit.

Anthea stretched for a moment, still appreciating the feel of his incredible sheets against her bare back, then tucked her hands behind her neck on the pillow and stared up at him. “I have a feeling that you’re not going to find this answer very satisfying, but I just didn’t know that this was what you wanted,” she said simply, and he blinked.

He shook his head as he drew on his dressing gown, and his mood seemed to shift from amused to melancholy. “A shame, that it took this sort of business to get us sorted, then.”

“Or, alternatively, at least _something_ good came out of this bullshit.” Anthea strongly prefered her interpretation, and was pleased when it brought a smile back to Mycroft’s increasingly careworn face.

“Very well. I defer to your good judgment on the matter,” he said politely, tying his belt with a distracted air.

“You do? May I include that point on the memo to the staff, then, sir?” she asked playfully, glancing about for her BlackBerry and remembering that she was not going to find it. “And have Geoffrey synch me up a new BlackBerry, would you, sir?” she added, nestling down in the sheets.

Mycroft simply smirked at her and departed, then after a beat his footsteps paused and his voice carried back into the room. “I better _not_ see a memo, Anthea,” he clarified briskly, and she smiled into the pillow as she listened to him head downstairs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Say, does anyone happen to know a more Brit- and context-appropriate word for "gentlemen who are high on meth or heroine or something similarly generally unpleasant" than 'tweakers'? I'm a Northern Californian psychologist with a checkered past, not the British PA to the most powerful man in Britain, so I'm concerned that my slang might not be appropriate in Anthea's mouth. Anyone, anyone? Bueller?
> 
> ETA 11/5: Thank you Wetislandinthenorthatlantic for addressing this point. They suggested 'yob.'


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